What ho, Enormous Raglan here.

 

Just wanted to scotch this canard about self and St Pinwale being one and the same person, and being a person of a culinary bent, you'd know about scotching canards.  Anyway, no truth in it at all.  I'm nowhere near holy enough and all previous attempts at walking on water have ended in unpleasantness.  I've said enough, it's all too painful.

 

A big hats aloft for the Gurnard's Head piece.  Might give it a go next time we come down.  I think I may have mentioned it before, but if anyone does follow your advice (and I suppose somebody somewhere must) and visits Geevor Mine, go find the 3D model of the mine workings between Geevor and, I think, Botallack.  It's a magnificent model and shows the complexity of the shafts and workings superbly well.  Anyone with half a brain cell should feel more than slightly humbled by what was achieved by the tinners of 200 years ago.

 

Anyway, must go and find out what a haggis bashing swamp is.  Hope it's something nice.  My friend seems to be keeping you up to date with all the gossip so as I'm rather busy at the mo, I'll leave it in her capable hands.

They were wittering on about trying to restore the man engine at the Levant Mine (just on the Land's End side of Geevor). Now that would be impressive, although I doubt they'd actually let you have a go on it. Apparently it took about twenty minutes to get from the top of the mine to the lowest shaft (or vice versa) using it and you didn't get paid until you clocked on at the tinface (or whatever it's called) so all that shaft-shuffling was done on your own time!

 

Still, I suppose one bonus from the demise of the tin mining industry is that when Dubya starts sending the big mushrooms over at least we'll have ready made bunkers to flee into.

Not sure Dubya's lot are capable of hitting anything quite as small as Cornwall with their surgically precise laser guided ordnance (cluster bombs??).  Still, don't forget the remark made by a British officer in France in 1944 "When the RAF attack, the Germans duck.  When the Luftwaffe attack, we duck.  When the USAF attack, everybody ducks."  Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, just to prove I can be as big a smartarse as everybody else.

 

Them tinners didn't just have to get to the bottom of the shaft before they started getting paid, they had to walk through 2 miles of tunnels to the tin face as well.  And that's having already walked to the mine from St Just.

 

I did see a notice about something being restored at Levant and opened this year, though there didn't seem much sign of anything happening last time we were there.  Call me a great big wimp if you like, but seeing as their man-engine was the one that killed 31 people in 1919, I'm not entirely sure I'd fancy a go on it.